Two children—one boy, one girl—stumbled between dew-slick trunks, with grass stains on their knees and grins on their faces.
The young boy threw his head back and howled to the canopy above. The girl fell to the ground, breathless and flushed. She drew a handful of plucked petals from her pocket and tossed them at the boy. The light yellow flecks caught in his long hair and fell onto his shoulders. He spluttered and flailed about as the petals fell beneath his shirt and tickled his skin.
"Quiet!" The little girl hissed, drunk on a child's imagination. "You'll wake the monsters!"
In the shallow forest, a stone's throw from the boy's cottage, neither child truly feared the slumbering monsters.
Her friend dropped to the forest floor, his long hair splayed messily across the dirt ground. The children stayed there, resting and chattering with the birds, for what felt like hours until the boy's mother called them inside, safe from the approaching darkness.
The children loped away, arms linked and heads bowed as the sound of their giggles drifted between the trees, caught by the wind.